Randy Gross Posts

We’re proud to reintroduce you to certification.comptia.org. This new site is the result of months of collaboration between CompTIA and many of our users to provide a much improved website experience. Here we present five highlights of the new site.

We’ve seen a tremendous adoption of our website’s new capabilities since we relaunched CompTIA.org, and we’re planning several upgrades to the site. Here are some of the improvements we’ve added since launch, and how they can help you and your business.

Welcome to the new CompTIA.org! We’ve rebuilt the site from the ground up and wrapped it in a lightweight, modern design. Once you start clicking around, you’ll find many improvements and new features that were designed to work with your PC, tablet and smartphone to get you to the information you need.

This past Saturday, my wife discovered that our town was having a recycling event, where the items accepted, at no cost, included all manner of electronic equipment, bikes, cell phones, scrap metal, and books, and eyeglasses.She saw this as a fantastic opportunity to rid ourselves of a 20 year old nonfunctioning CRT TV that easily topped 100 lbs.  In a storm of late spring cleaning, we found another 3 large bags of various cabling and equipment that no longer worked.  We loaded it all in the car ...

Several days ago, an acquaintance of mine had to go to the ER.  To rule out the possibility of a larger problem, the doctor suggested they get a CAT scan.  Right away, even before the procedure, registration had come back with the bill, which was a large mortgage payment for 95% of the country.  That cost will likely be negotiated down through the insurance carrier, but will still likely be in the 4 figures.The procedure ruled out a serious problem, which was a major relief to all involved.  In ...

We received a lot of interest yesterday in the ‘Cloud Calculus’ post, and I’d like to follow up with a couple more thoughts.Our IT Infrastructure Director made a good point after reading the post that there is an inflection point where SaaS starts to makes sense, at least for us and potentially others.  An inflection point is described as “If one imagines driving a vehicle along a winding road, inflection is the point at which the steering-wheel is momentarily "straight" when being turned from l ...

Information Week published a thorough article on how to evaluate SaaS, written from the perspective of the CIO's decision to present it as an option to her CEO or Board of Directors. The core bullets:1. Manage Expectations2. Partner Internally3. Vet Your Vendors Well4. Be Careful About Cost5. Confront the RisksI'd like to address point 4, specifically around the costs of the Cloud and Saas.  I personally believe that the subscription model is the most powerful in business.  Insurance companies a ...

I wrote a draft post last week that will never see the light of day.  In it, I sought to pay tribute to someone I respect very much for their intellect and world experience.  When I started my CIO gig, they imparted the following maxims:Think DefensivelyThink DeceitfullyProceed with Caution – at All TimesIt is good stuff that promotes great questions and discussion - I have had them printed out at my desk since Day 1.  In the post, I wrote a couple of points on each bullet, and thought I had som ...

I have a Google News Alert set up every day for the term ‘CIO.’  Besides the inclusion of AFL-CIO news (a topic on which I am now unintentionally well informed), there is a rotating series of articles around the role of the CIO that make the rounds.  From the last week, here are some of the articles relating to the job role of the CIO:CIOs ceding power to CFOs, survey finds Global CIO: Even Oracle & SAP Agree: The Tactical CIO Is Dead CFOs driving the IT spending bus, study says The New CIO ...

A colleague passed on a recent blog post by Eric Dishman at Intel -- "Think Big" as We Engage Patients & Families in a Healthcare System for the 21st Century -- and asked me to write a reaction to it. As background, my youngest child was born in 2006 with a number of acute and chronic conditions. Developmental pediatricians, ENT docs, gastroenterologists, cardiologists, neurologists, plastic surgeons, therapists – all of them had thoughts, directions, and diagnoses. The sub ...